A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

6.3.4.1 Pre-training language screening assessments
The initial severity of aphasia is considered to be a prognostic factor in its
recovery (see section 2.6.3.1) however this information was not available for this
investigation. Instead the severity of aphasia of each participant was measured
immediately prior to participation in the main investigation and the impact of
aphasia severity was assessed using this data. The language ability of
participants was assessed using the sub-test of the CLQT (Helm-Estabrooks,
2001) and data provided by the pre-training language screening assessments
(see section 4.2.3). There was a range of severity of aphasia among
participants. The CLQT language sub-test data indicated language processing
abilities ranging from within normal limits to severely aphasic. The range of
aphasia scores from the language screening assessments varied between 94%
(raw score of 124.5 out of a possible maximum of 133) to 51% (raw score of 68)
– the lower scores indicating more language severity. It was speculated that
participants with more severely impaired language abilities would learn fewer
new words than their less severely aphasic peers. The hypothesis ‘severity of
aphasia is positively correlated with the recall of new vocabulary’ was supported
for immediate recall by both the CLQT (r=+.605; p